| Entry: | Work continued on burial feature 1710. The work was done by Marin Pilloud and myself. The skeleton 10813 was further cleaned, photographed and documented. Given that the articulation of the skeleton is rather complicated this took a considerable amount of time. The bone hook on the chest of 10813 was consolidated by the conservators and than lifted (x1). The skull and some of the other elements of the skeleton were also lifted, but the main task of lifting remains for Saturday.
Furthermore I worked on the removal of fill 10812 of cut 10811 (feature 1702). I do not completely understand the relation between this large cut and the three burial episodes, the cut seems too large. The fill matrix does seem to be quite distinct from the building fill to the north and west, and the feature seems to be genuine. One possibility is that this cut relates to skeleton 10814 for which we have not been able to define a cut, but it seems much too large for this. Perhaps f. 1702 is not related to the burials at all and served some other purpose, but in that case it is dificult to understand why the fill is so homogeneous across features 1702, 1709 and 1710. One possibility might be that we conflated the cuts of 1709 and 1719 (units 10830 and 10832), both of which are defined as arbitrary cuts into the large feature 1702. Cut are often exceedingly difficult to distinguish at Catal, especially when dealing with truncated and weathered surface.
Finally I drew a section of the 1997 profile across space 112 (04/915) in order to document the relations of the outer wallsç f. 267 to the west and f. 259 to the east, to the surrounding walls. Increasingly I have the feeling that the southern strectch of the east wall f. 267, south of the space 112 / 231 division is not identical to the northern part, which is largely truncated by the plastered niche f. 1706. There are four reasons for this. First the matrix of this stretch of wall is distinct from that of the northern part of f. 267 and the identical matrices of the north wall f. 1700 and the west wall f. 267. Second the southern part of the east wall comes in at a drunken angle leaning to the west, whereas this does not happen to the north. Third the southern part of the wall has plaster on both the front and the back surfaces, but this is not the case elsewhere. This may suggest that a new wall was placed in front of the original wall (which may have become unstable). Fourth, the southern part of the east wall is built on top of a fill matrix, rather than on top of the dark grey bricks that can be traced below the walls of space 112 in other areas.
Tentatively I would suggest that a later support wall was constructed in front of the original east wall of space 112 in this area. This would tie in with observations made during the excavation of the southern part of space 112, in which a similar later support wall (f. 253) was found along the east wall. This hypothesis faces one problem, however. The original wall can not be traced in this area with any confidence. In theory it could have been truncated, but in that case we would not expect to find a plastered wall surface at the back of the 'support' wall. Given these considerations, one of the first tasks once the burials have been removed must be the removal of this bit of wall in order to explore what happened here.Entered By: Bleda During |
